e down the stairs and all was still.

"The wicked, cruel thing!" she burst forth. "The cook takes things
herself and then says Becky steals them. She DOESN'T! She DOESN'T!
She's so hungry sometimes that she eats crusts out of the ash barrel!"
She pressed her hands hard against her face and burst into passionate
little sobs, and Ermengarde, hearing this unusual thing, was overawed
by it. Sara was crying! The unconquerable Sara! It seemed to denote
something new--some mood she had never known. Suppose--suppose--a new
dread possibility presented itself to her kind, slow, little mind all
at once. She crept off the bed in the dark and found her way to the
table where the candle stood. She struck a match and lit the candle.
When she had lighted it, she bent forward and looked at Sara, with her
new thought growing to definite fear in her eyes.

"Sara," she said in a timid, almost awe-stricken voice, "are--are--you
never told me--I don't want to be rude, but--are YOU ever hungry?"

It was too much just at that moment. The barrier broke down. Sara
lifted her face from her hands.

"Yes," she said in a new passionate way. "Yes, I am. I'm so hungry
now that I could almost eat you. And it makes it worse to hear poor
Becky. She's hungrier than I am."

Ermengarde gasped.

"Oh, oh!" she cried woefully. "And I never knew!"

"I didn't want you to know," Sara said. "It would have made me feel
like a street beggar. I know I look like a street beggar."

"No, you don't--you don't!" Ermengarde broke in. "Your clothes are a
little queer--but you couldn't look like a street beggar. You haven't
a street-beggar face."

"A little boy once gave me a sixpence for charity," said Sara, with a
short little laugh in spite of herself. "Here it is." And she pulled
out the thin ribbon from her neck. "He wouldn't have given me his
Christmas sixpence if I hadn't looked as if I needed it."

Somehow the sight of the dear little sixpence was good for both of
them. It made them laugh a little, though they both had tears in their
eyes.

"Who was he?" asked Ermengarde, looking at it quite as if it had not
been a mere ordinary silver sixpence.

"He was a darling little thing going to a party," said Sara. "He was
one of the Large Family, the little one with the round legs--the one I
call Guy Clarence. I suppose his nursery was crammed with Christmas
presents and hampers full of cakes and things, and he could see I had
nothing."